Editors' Review

This application offers fairly decent parental filters for online access, but some competitive features are overlooked. Cybersitter only works with Internet Explorer and Netscape to block access to objectionable material on the Web, P2P file sharing, FTP sites, instant messages, and if necessary, all access to the Internet. You can configure the program to use Cybersitter's search engine and schedule allowable access times. The program filters search attempts and Web sites according to a default list or user-defined keywords. You'll also appreciate the blacklist that effectively shuns both URLs and phrases listed. What's more, it includes a whitelist of sorts, with one simple click, the only sites accessible are the ones you've specified. Though you won't find application blocking, screen captures, or a full keylogger feature, Cybersitter can log chats, sites visited, and any violation attempts, all of which can be sent to your e-mail. Its user-friendly interface is password-protected though the 10-day trial disables this feature. While it isn't exactly feature-rich, this software will provide parents a fractional set of parental-control tools.

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Publisher's Description

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From Solid Oak Software:
Cybersitter gives adults the ability to limit children's access to objectionable material on the Internet. Parents can choose to block, block and alert, or simply alert them when access to these areas is attempted. Working secretly in the background, Cybersitter analyzes all Internet activity. Whenever it detects activity that the parent has elected to restrict, Cybersitter takes over and blocks the activity before it takes place. The program's intelligent "content recognition" system even recognizes and filters brand new sites that contain objectionable material. Cybersitter also offers selectable blocking of WWW, Newsgroups, Chat, Mail, and ICQ. If desired, Cybersitter will maintain a complete history of all Internet activity, including attempts to access blocked material. Password-protected, Cybersitter is easy to deactivate or reconfigure by the parent, and virtually impossible for the child to detect or defeat.

Not compatible with win7 despite what they say - MS IE redirects don't work and support told me to use Firefox ... what? So, when it blocks, you have no idea unless you go sifting through the access log.

the product DOES NOT function as advertised on systems with newer operating systems. the company doesnt support problems when they come up. they quit responding to support requests when they cannot make the product work. know that before you buy!!

Summary

Product does not work on newer systems as advertised.The promised functionality is inaccurate.Company does not respond to support requests after they realize that there is a problem that they cannot fix.Company wont give you a refund even though the product is DEFECTIVE.

Oh how I miss my stable system... Win XP, Firefox, IE 6, AOL 9.0, windows explorer, games, pretty much EVERYTHING has been crashing since I installed this software. And not just one crash every now and then... Consistant program inhibiting crashes!

Summary

I don't know how they can sell this product with a clean concience? Did they do ANY testing on it??? Yes it has a lot of features, but it has an equal if not greater amount of BUGS. I wasted $40 on this software and I hope you do not do the same...

The product can be easily removed/disabled when you find out all of the cons.Also, I couldn't fully install it anyways.

Cons

This program is DANGEROUS and will easily completely screw up your computer If you don't completely install it (like I did)!!

Summary

I'll tell you about my experience with the program:

When I tried to install the software, the installer program froze up and I had no choice but to forcibly terminate it in the process of installation (the X was grayed out). So, I terminated the installer's (or should I say computer destroyer's) wretched process and restarted my computer. The when I logged in, I was (at least partially) surprised to find my computer a wreck!! All I saw was the desktop background for about 10 minutes, then a message from cyber sitter saying that 'some components are not fully working, try enabling them' or something to that effect. My internet had 'little to no connectivity' and no matter what, I couldn't fix it. I at last resorted to System Restore (something Microsoft HAS actually done good with) and restored my computer with it (worked like a charm).

It installs in a minute without telling you how it potentially locks up your PC with conflicts with Norton's antivius. It slows everything down to a crawl. They give you no uninstall feature and won't help you when you call to unistall.

Once you load it, it is on for good and you have to format your hard drive to start over.

It doesn't block easy to access porn sites and others it is told to block.

Much worse, it blocks portal sites like MSN.com, Yahoo.com and others based on their changing content (about 50 percent of the time). Blocks most webmail access dispite being whitelisted. Worse yet, is that sites with heavy use of Javascript, like airline reservation sites, cause Cyber to randomly block the page or crash IE. XP Pro, two computers have the same problems. Even with different builds and hours of work attempting to white-list these sites, it still blocks and crashes on them.

Why anyone would use, much less pay for this software is beyond me. Worthless!

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